Turbo-Charge Weight Loss, Boost Memory, Combat Cancer
Jadis Tillery was worried about her waistline in the run-up to her wedding last March. ‘I have diabetes in my family, so I’ve always been aware of the need to stay trim,’ explains the 32-year-old marketing executive from London.
‘But even though I eat well and work out regularly, I just couldn’t shift those few extra pounds round my middle. Precisely the area my dress was going to highlight.’
Then she learned about a novel new weekly diet plan – which involved cutting her calories to just 1,000 a day for three days, then increasing them to 1,500 for the remaining four. (The normal recommended daily intake for a woman is 2,000).
The results, she says, were ‘amazing’. Not only did she rarely suffer hunger pangs (‘For the last four days I was eating 1,500 calories and having two delicious meals a day, but by the end of the week I was finding it hard to finish them’), but she had loads more energy.
Even more pleasing were the physical results.
‘I know about diets – I’ve been on plenty – but the results came as a real surprise. By the end of the week I’d lost just over 6lb of fat. But the real shock was finding that I’d put on nearly 2lb of muscle, even though I’d done virtually no exercise in that time.’
This meant her total weight loss on the scales was 4lb, but her body composition had changed so she was leaner. (This was calculated by measuring her body fat with calipers before and after and then comparing that with the weight lost).
This is not the kind of effect you’d expect from cutting calories alone (and even then, you wouldn’t expect such a loss of weight). So what was going on?
The secret lies in what Jadis was actually eating.
Her diet was packed with foods that are naturally rich in chemical compounds that experts now believe are crucial for burning fat, reducing appetite and boosting health.
These chemicals are thought to directly affect a group of ‘housekeeping’ genes in the body called sirtuins. These genes control the way our bodies handle fat and sugar.
Sirtuin genes spring into action when we feel mildly stressed. Cutting back on your calories for a day or so can trigger them – this might help explain why the 5:2 diet (where you eat very little for two days a week, and then eat normally on the other five days) helps people lose weight. The physical stress of exercising also triggers sirtuins.
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